omg blogger I miss you so. It's brings back memories of the periods of time when I had so much free time to come up with stuff.

It is so hard to write stuff well, I realize. Especially regarding things that actually matter, because so much of the time, what could be said has already been said. I think even if my writing seminar didn't teach me how to write well, it has taught me intellectual humility. There are many good ideas out there, and even if an idea sounds silly initially, research can often show otherwise.

My first essay pretty much went along the lines of "why is everyone talking about these irrelevant stuff?" I thought that it didn't take much to show that something is wrong or irrelevant. The problem though, was that I was doing an essay on ethics, and there isn't a set of fundamental principles that everyone can agree on. Is ethics based on rights and duties? Intuition? Minimizing suffering? I was lucky in KI in that I never really had to deal with ethics very much, because I could simply choose another essay. But here, it was three big assignments about ethics, so I had to deal with them somehow.

Coming up with something meaningful, interesting AND original is not simple, because so many other people are writing about meaningful and original stuff. There's so much research that needs to be done beforehand. Even then, it's often the case that I'll find people who disagree with my position, and it's so damned hard to show that he/she is wrong and I am right. There are so many ways to show how one thing is ethically sound and so many ways to show that it is not.

So this writing sem was one long route march out of my comfort zone, and I'm so glad I'm finally done with it. I may not have learn how to write, but I think I've learnt the importance of reading up beforehand. It's probably below what the university expects of me as I complete this course, but I'm glad that I took something away from it.

Random thought:

Military wedding vow:

I [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], take you  [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], to be my wedded wife/husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish WITH MY LIFE.

Random thoughts:

Woman jane = new Woman(32, 28, 33);
jane.makeSandwich();

My observation (which may be inaccurate) is that Singaporeans speak Singlish as a faster rate than native English-speakers speak English. I suspect that the tones on the words in Singlish act as an error correcting code that allows mumbled consonants to be deciphered. This error correcting code allows a high rate of low fidelity information to be transmitted and comprehended.

Heard:

"If I go to heaven, what I'll be most worried about is that I see God and he sneezes. Then what do I say? 'Bless yourself?'"

I'm pleasantly surprised to find that there are more people who can pronounce my name right the first time than it had originally thought. (They just can't remember it though.) Before I left for the US, people were telling me that I need an easier name to go by. So, for the first week or so I switched between "Xin Yang" and "Yak", then eventually settled at "Yak". I figured that although I'll prefer to have people call me Xin Yang to Yak, being called Yak is still preferable to people not knowing or remembering my name.

Interestingly, some people insist on calling me by my "actual name". The first time that happened, I wondered if it was necessary for me to "simplify" my name at all. But I guess it's just some people who are better with names. Now when people ask my name, I'll go "My name is Xin Yang, but you can call me Yak." This gives them the option of using the "easier" name, while not implicitly doubting the person's ability to remember or pronounce my actual name.

The first time I introduced myself that way, I was suddenly reminded of the time when the grad student at NUS introduced himself to me as "My name is _____(which I can't remember), but you can me Dood." It reminded me of the first time I cut vegetables and hand to transfer them to a bowl. The first few attempts always led to some vegetables falling out of the bowl. Finally, I figured the best way to do this was to cup my hand over the cut vegetables, slide the knife under it, hover the hand and knife over the bowl, then withdraw the knife at an angle. It was only after doing that a few times that I realised that it was the same way that my mother or the people on cooking shows would transfer the cut vegetables from the chopping board to a bowl using the knife. Somehow, through different experiences, we just arrive at the same answer, because it is probably the best one there is.

Perhaps that's why adults all seem to behave in a certain way that makes them different from teens or children.

临时抱佛脚。

If you weigh something to find the weight, do you heigh something to find the height?


When you read the above sentence, in your inner dialogue, does "heigh" rhyme with "weigh" or does it rhyme with "why"?

Random thoughts:

If the person who is paid by a "payer" is called a "payee", a person who is tutored by a "tutor" is called a "tutee", is the dough baked by a "baker" called a "bakee"? The cigarette smoked by a "smoker" called a "smokee"?

Though I guess there isn't much point to give them names like that, since the terms like "payee" and "tutee" is meant to indicate to people (who already have a lot of other roles) what roles they are currently assuming, whereas a cigarette is usually assuming the role of being smoked and a lump of dough is usually assuming the role of being baked. So "cigarette" and "dough" are probably sort-of equivalent to "smokee" and "bakee".


Some literature has said that quantum entanglement is a resource, but I think it's kinda iffy. Unlike energy, there isn't a one-size-fits-all method to quantify it. I remember Prof Kwek was looking for a lay-man's analogy to measures of quantum entanglement - how there are so many different definitions, how the usefulness of each definition depends on the application the quantum states are associated with, and how different definitions may not agree with with other about whether one state is more entangled than another. Yet, measures of quantum entanglement are also not completely arbitrary, because there are some quantum states that are generally agreed upon to be maximally entangled and some that are completely un-entangled, which most (I dare not say all since I don't know all of them) measures of entanglement would indicate.

His first analogy was happiness, but he felt that it was too un-physical and imprecise. His second analogy was entropy (for example, Renyi entropy isn't just one single definition, but a definition that depends on some parameters, and these parameters depend on the application). I don't understand Renyi entropy at all, so I can't really appreciate whether his analogy was particularly apt. But now that I think about it, all the above characteristics remind me of measures of intelligence. There are various measures of intelligence, each of them useful for different purposes and different scales may not agree on whether one guy is more intelligent than another. But intelligence isn't completely arbitrary either, since there are some abilities that are generally recognised to be crucial indicators of intelligence, so surely a hypothetical person who gets a perfect score on a particular test item that tests this ability (maybe a what-pattern-comes-next test? I don't know) would be given high intelligence scores on most measures of intelligence (except maybe the more differentiated measures like the sub-scales of multiple intelligences).

Yay! So, next time someone asks me "what have you been doing for the past six months" I would have a nice reply. "I've been studying measures of quantum entanglement, which is somewhat iffy like measures of intelligence, but not quite."


What if Bell's inequality is tested in a way that the measurements are made in different inertial frames moving at relativistic speeds? Since simultaneity is relative, from one frame it would appear as though the measurement in say, Alice frame causes the wavefunction collapse and determines the quantum state that can be measured by Bob, while in Bob's frame it could appear otherwise. A simple way to reconcile this could be to state that that Alice would measure and what Bob would measure are both predetermined from the start, but Aha! this would cause the Bell's inequality to be satisfied even at Bell's test angles with maximally entangled states! Maybe there really isn't a problem with this scenario, but I'm kinda lazy to think about it now.

Just wondering about the first two lines of 林俊杰's 曹操...

First line:
不是英雄, 不论三国

Since a conditional statement is equivalent to the converse of its inverse, it can therefore be rewritten as such:
P1: 论三国的都是英雄.

Second line:
若是英雄怎么能不懂寂寞

This is clearly a rhethorical question, which means:
P2: 英雄都是寂寞的.

We are thus forced to conclude that:
C: 论三国的都是寂寞的.


Just sayin'.

Some reflections on my "work" at NUS, Centre for Quantum Technologies.

I hadn't realised it then, but coming up with something there is quite a difficult thing to do. I'm not sure if those people that my prof had previously recruited before they started uni had produced anything, but it is not a nice feeling to hang around at a place for five months without much idea of what's going in. I guess an analogy would be like being employed by a greek company in greece, with all the books(except maybe one) that teach greek also written in greek.

To be more specific, my journey started with my prof asking me to do the exercises in Griffith's Intro to QM (or as the taiwanese grad student would call it, the 猫书), and learning about Perez-Horodecki's criterion for separable states. Then he taught me about pure states and mixed states. One week later, I was given one 4 page paper, which supposedly requires me to understand a 90 page review paper on quantum entanglement before I could appreciate it. I got stuck on the fifth page, i.e, when the first mathematical equation appeared (the definition of a separable state). It was written in Dirac's notation and made use of the tensor product symbol. It was around that time when I started chapter 3 in the 猫书, where Dirac's notation was taught in one page. (I don't think I'm the only one who can't learn Dirac's notation explained in one page) But there wasn't any mention of tensor products, so I tried to learn about it on Wikipedia, which was a really bad idea, since I followed every link, hoping to be able to understand this one by following the next... but it somehow got into group theory and abstract algebra. Having learnt nothing about tensor products (except the fact that it's a bilinear map), I tried to see if it was related to tensors. I didn't manage to learn much about tensors. After two weeks of struggling with Dirac notation and the elusive tensor product, I asked my prof what a tensor product is, and he gave a really simple explanation. Lesson learnt: don't know, ask. Around this time, a teacher happened to ask me how I was doing, and he recommended me Susskin's lecture and Cohen-Tannouji's textbook, which were really helpful.

Around this time, my prof asked me to help him write some lecture notes for grad students, and I got really excited, cos it made it sound like I was very zai. I came up with the first set of lecture notes, but honestly, I don't think I really understood the material well enough to write notes about it, so my notes were quite crap. Perhaps his intention was to make me think hard about what I was learning. But a nice side effect was that I got introduced to LaTeX, which is NOT user friendly at all.

Just when I thought I could be helping those after me to learn about quantum information, I realised that Nielson and Chieng's textbook of quantum information was better than what I could ever write in the next few months, so the notes I wrote was quite redundant. Also, in the last week there, I realised that measures of quantum entanglement had to be associated with some application for it to have any physical meaning, and so far I had learnt nothing about the application. There have been a few instances when people asked me "can you explain in lay-man's terms what is it that you do?" and I couldn't. At the end of it, I didn't even understand half of that 90 page review paper. That sucks.

But oh well. At least I learnt some LaTeX and linear algebra. And I finally have some idea of what a matrix determinant is.

令堂甚肥 -  具落雁之地心引力矣！

Once one proceeds from Descartes’ global scepticism, one either has to contend with solipsism, or presume that our sensory experience alludes to some underlying consistency in what really exists out there. I personally can find no rational justification to favour any particular ontological theory over another, but I have placed my faith in Materialism (as opposed to Dualism and Idealism) for its congruence with all my other beliefs.

It thus makes sense for me to induce that all events proceed either deterministically or probabilistically from their prior state. Given also that laws of nature do not change, there appears to be no way that one’s consciousness can have any influence in the outcome of things.

I used to think that belief in free will is a hindrance to true understanding of people, and that psychological egoism and utilitarianism combined would be superior to belief in free will in its potential explanatory power. But there are many problems with that approach – we don’t know the relevant coefficients, it requires too much tweaking of coefficients to work, scaling up to more than one person changes mathematical relationships dramatically, and it’s simply not practical because people are not good at calculations the way computers are (just like computers aren’t good at recognising human faces or associating emotions with facial expressions the way humans generally are).

So due to our biological-endowed strengths and weaknesses, our intuitions about ourselves and others based on free will are, for practical day-to-day purposes, the best things we have to understand ourselves and others (though sociologists are probably encouraged to use computers to simulate human behaviour). But recognising that free will is merely a heuristic that we are forced to employ due to our inabilities ought to make us more cautious about drawing conclusions from such intuitions and “off-set” them with science where necessary.

Thus, in our day-to-day interactions, it makes sense to talk about “self-restraint” and “conscientiousness”. It also makes sense to judge people as agents who know “right” from “wrong” and can choose as appropriate, and take responsibility for “their” actions. While it does get a bit grey when nature and nurture come into play, nobody really doubts the existence of a self that one has substantial control over under normal circumstances.

“Substantial control” is still not total control, though. Self-control seems to slip out when emotions rise, so control of emotions is important. I used to believe that I have been keeping my emotions under control, but now it seems to me that I just haven’t been feeling my own emotions strongly. Somehow, people realise that I am happy or angry or sad before I do. And upon reflection, it does seem that my facial expressions and body postures change to reflect my emotions outward before I am aware of it. Perhaps, I may even I have said and done things in an emotional state without myself realising it. Maybe I can overcome this by being more conscious of my facial expressions and body posture, infer my own emotional state, and thereby maintain greater control.

Control over thought seems to be more difficult, though(“Don’t think about a pink elephant”, for example). To me, studying involves looking at a piece of paper/website, and I either understand it or I don’t. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it happens instantly, sometimes it feels like it would never happen, but “I” have no control over it. As I walk along, thoughts just appear in the form of voices and sights and sounds (which I can thankfully distinguish from real sights and sounds). It might be possible for me, under the influence of a particular train of thought (caused by a certain book, for instance), to alter my environment that produces a certain way of thinking to attain a certain outcome (such as setting a goal, writing it down and displaying it at a prominent place). But still, that just makes my current self the outcome of a previous train of thought.

Streams of consciousness produce such erratic trains of thought, but perhaps it is only the self-enforcing ones that define a person. From my perception of other people’s intuition, people are supposed to be stable over time, that perhaps, there is a “self” to be found somewhere in consistent behaviour. But maybe this intuition is wrong.

It seems that stable and consistent thoughts and behaviours are created from trains of thought that lead to self-reinforcing thoughts and behaviour – and these sets of thoughts and behaviours become one’s identity. So, perhaps, personal identity is also merely a heuristic for “selves” to make sense of their own thoughts, behaviour, subjective perceptions and interpretations of their surroundings. Without a stable personal identity, it might not make sense for one to make promises or to set goals or to plan for the future.

I realise that my “time-slice” heuristic is only practical and consistent when combined with theories of stable personality traits (because otherwise whenever I try to plan something for my future, I wouldn’t have any way to tell if I might still want it in future). Then again, if I test my own personality to help me decide how to plan for my future, isn’t it just a train of thought that leads to self-reinforcing thoughts and behaviour, thereby leading to a “personal identity”? I’m not sure if I want a “personal identity” created this way – somehow it just doesn’t seem quite right. 

Oh gosh, I haven't blogged for so long throughout this eventful period. In case in future I do want to know what I've been doing so far, here goes:

- Performed salsa on stage for Jitterbugs Studio Recital as part of a student team. I was strangely calm on stage - more calm than I usually was during rehearsals, and as I performed I felt as though I wasn't there. It was the same feeling that I had during National Science Challenge. After that, I went to cafe iguana with the girls for a post-performance chill-out! They were gossiping about the instructors and the good-looking guys at the recital, and they didn't seem to mind my presence. Much of their info was obtained from facebook, and the nicknames they give to some of the guys are really amusing! Like, there seems to be this agreed-upon ranking of which guys are most good-looking, and since nobody knows the name of the number two guy(everyone was too shy to ask), he's code-named "second choice". Among themselves they really refer to him that way, like,

"Eh, I saw second choice on the MRT just now!"
"Really, where!"

And apparently there is also a mutually agreed-upon ranking for the girls among the girls too. Discussing and ranking of people according to looks seemed like something that girls would do in secondary school, but they are all around mid-twenties. I remember that even among the 07S06D guys there was an agreed-upon 四大美女 within the class, so hearing them gossip somewhat reminded me of the first 3 months in RJ.

- Learnt how to use the Dirac notation in quantum mechanics. Gosh. Now that I think back, what I've learnt in those three weeks isn't that hard after all! Why did it take me three weeks then? I suspect that treating quantum states as vectors is very unintuitive. And then there is still index notation and tensor product and unitary transformations before I can understand the second page of the 100 page primer to the 4 page primer to the research proper.... it reminds me of the time in sec 3 I asked Chandru about motion under air resistance. He wrote 10 lines of solution, pointed to the first 2 lines and said, "This is the Physics." Then he pointed to the next 8 lines and said, "And this is the Mathematics."

- Went to China. The driving is insane. Also, we went there as guests to a wedding, of whom the bride's family is from UK and the groom's family is from China, so being bilingual Singaporeans, we offered to help translate! Though towards the end, we felt a little under-appreciated.

- Applications. After getting rejected by so many unis and colleges, I felt a bit like I had to settle for NTU. When I went to check my status online, I was just thinking of getting over with with whole US apps thingy, so I was really really surprised to see the acceptance by Princeton. Even though I showed the page to my family and they were all really happy for me, it still felt a bit unreal then. Right then I wanted to share the good news with all my friends who have supported me in my application. But at the same time, I wondered if sharing the news would sound like showing off if they didn't get into the universities they wanted. So I only told a few people then. But, the other thing I hadn't expected was how sincere zi lin was when she congratulated me. It's definitely not that I thought that she was an insincere person, but it's the first time I've ever received congratulations that really made me feel that the other person was happy for me rather than something that you are expected to say in accordance to social norms. To me, those were the three best things that happened to me that day: Princeton acceptance, Princeton financial aid, and a sincere congratulation(s?).

Oh man, the studio recital is coming up so soon... which means that rehearsals would be ending.

When I started out at the rehearsals, there seemed like so much to do; every weekend was occupied. But now that I'm getting more familiar with the dance routine (and that the music has been sped up substantially), six minutes of performance feels like such an awfully short time. And I suspect that after the performance, it would take me a while for me to get used to being free on weekends again. I think, what I'll miss most is the times I spent hanging out with Jake, Patricia and Aretha before and after lessons.

Somehow, I'm looking forward to the next rehearsal more than going to NUS. Weekends used to be something between weekdays; now it feels like the other way round.

Ten years ago:

I would not have imagined myself in RI.

I would not have imagined myself representing RI.

I would not have imagined myself representing Singapore.

I would not have imagined myself firing a rifle grenade.

I would not have imagined myself being an army officer.

I would certainly not have imagined myself dancing salsa and doing hiprolls on the SCGS stage.

No, not even in my wildest dreams.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.


[Name] and the [Noun]


=>


Stephen Hawking and the Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking and the Universe in a Nutshell
Stephen Hawking and the Shoulders of Giants
Aldous Huxley and the Brave New World
Oliver Sacks and the Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
Longman and the Dictionary
Lagemaat and the Theory of Knowledge
Richard Dawkins and the Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins and the Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion
Steven Reiss and the Normal Personality
Malcolm Gladwell and the Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell and the Tipping Point
Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto
Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations
Nicolo Machiavelli and the Prince 
Antoine de Saint-Exupery and the Little Prince
Plato and the Republic
John Milton and the Lost Paradise
Al Gore and the Inconvenient Truth
James Cameron and the Avatar

After hearing Jiahuang's derivation of Boltzmann distribution from first principles of thermodynamics(btw, Jiahuang is in J1) recently, it struck me that utilitarianism might not be as useful as I had thought after all.

There are two interpretations of utilitarianism. One is that "We should always try to maximise total utility in a society." The other is that "Society can be understood in terms of maximisation of personal utility." I have felt that the first interpretation is pretty problematic, but I saw potential in the second interpretation.

One impetus for the second interpretation is that it readily allows us to apply the powerful tools used in physics and mathematics to understand society in a statistical way. After all, in a reaction chamber, whether an individual molecule would react or not is a very tricky business, but at a large scale and long time frame (reactions take place to moles of particles in femtoseconds), regular patterns are observed at the macro level (such as temperature and concentration). We do not need to understand quantum chemistry to study reaction kinetics at a macro level; so perhaps, you also do not need to fully consider the complexity of individuals to understand macro-level measurements (perhaps things like as inflation, population levels and Human Development Index?). In other words, are there social phenomena and measurements that are emergent from considering human interactions at a statistical level? (I believe this is similar to Durkheim's "social facts".)

Let us consider thermodynamics again. As Ricardo once said, "If you ask an atom what the temperature is, he wouldn't know. But he can tell you how much kinetic energy he has." Note that in a box of gas, temperature in Kelvin is equal to twice the average kinetic energy of molecules divided by the degrees of freedom and Boltzmann's constant. It is therefore not hard to imagine that some measurement that is fundamental to our understanding of society would appear pretty elusive and unintuitive to an individual. Also, you can't just take any statistical measurement of society and expect it to be fundamentally significant. If you worked with the average magnitude of the velocities in a box of gas, or their harmonic mean weighted, or their median, or their geometric mean, good luck trying to derive something meaningful - because you still haven't figured out that mass and degrees of freedom are important. While trial-and error might eventually work, you might want to note that the above amazing relationship between temperature and KE of gas particles was not obtained by trial-and-error; it was derived from Newton's Laws. And we are not even talking about humans, we are talking about gas particles - incompressible, completely elastic, infinitesimally small, with negligible attractions or repulsions, not there weren't that many factors to tweak anyway. But maybe! Just maybe, that elusive fundamentally meaningful property that arises from statistical measurements of society is looking right at us now. Can utility save the day?

Maybe. But problem is, you can't measure utility. That doesn't mean we should give up on it though - the guys in the white lab coats couldn't measure entropy either, but they didn't give up. If you understand entropy, you'd probably think that the discovery of entropy is incredibly awesome. Unfortunately, I don't understand entropy, so I can't share your joy. But entropy is very fundamental to thermodynamics. So fundamental that the thermodynamic viability of anything (yes, anything, even the collection of dust in your keyboard) is understood in terms of entropy. From what I've learnt in the first week of H1 econs, utility cannot be measured directly, but can be detected when exchanges occur. (It's kinda like temperature and heat, don'cha think?) Good, so we've got the zeroth law of Economics down. When are the next three laws coming? Ok, never mind, let's just assume that utility works like the negative of potential energy. That would neatly parallel the first law of thermodynamics.

A huge problem arises here. Potential energy only makes sense in conservative fields [i.e., there is no closed path which a particle can take in the field that would cause it keep gaining energy, or simply put, where energy is always conserved], and it only makes sense if there is also a social equivalent of a force, and a social equivalent of momentum, a social equivalent of kinetic energy, and social equivalent of displacement etc. In other words, you need the social equivalent of Newton's laws. Unfortunately it either doesn't exist or hasn't been discovered.

Also, even if we assume that the social equivalent of Newton's laws exist, utility is clearly not a conservative field - it is supposed to increase with every exchange. It is also not strictly increasing either, because while we are guaranteed that total utility increases at the point of exchange (I guess that's why people like shopping so much?), utility can increase or decrease by a great deal in between exchanges. Since we spend more time working or consuming goods than making transactions, it is reasonable for us to suspect that the utility changes between transactions would be significant enough to off-set the utility gain from transaction.

Then there is the oft-stated argument of human irrationality, which I would not repeat here. There is this counter-argument from my econs teacher: "Some people would buy more than it is rational while some people will buy less than it is rational, so overall their effects would cancel out, and this assumption still works at a statistical level." But Dan Ariely says something like, "No, even statistically speaking, humans are irrational in predictable ways." "In fact, we have some idea of how to make them behave in a certain way without them realising it," Thaler and Sunstein might (probably) add. Given commercial interest in making people irrationally profligate at a statistical scale (by advertising and market research), I have serious doubts that this assumption is in any way justified.

Lastly, is there a sufficiently large number of events at a sufficiently long time scale for us to suppose that perturbations from anomalous probability distributions, unstable equilibriums and random events have negligible effects on society? Even physical systems with well defined characteristics can behave in a chaotic manner - what more humans who are hosts to memes? - memes that are struggling to survive and propagate with our minds and technology as their mediums, which evolve at human time-scales as well. And that is a huge destabilising factor not present anywhere else. This means that there is no convenient analogy to human society that we can just adapt and use.

Oh no. I guess utility isn't that fundamentally meaningful property that arises from statistical measurements of society that we are looking for then. How now brown cow.

The Beautiful Country.
The Chivalrous Country.
The Lawful Country.
The Virtuous Country.
The Peaceful Country.
The Mysterious Continent.
The Central Country.
The Freezing Country. (I know)
Sun-based.
Across the South.

Any more interesting ones?

While I'm still in a good mood, I should send a message to my future self. Which might just turn out to be significant. Or serve as an important element to a plot. Or become a Deus ex Machina in a lousy story. Or whatever.

_________

Hi there. Everything's looking pretty fine here. I'm not sure what you're going through right now, but I tell'ya. Questions about who you are, what you will become, and all the emotions you are going through now? My guess is, I've probably thought about those and felt the same things before too. And even after going through all that, I'm still pretty fine! All those memories before 21, I have'em too, and I remember them better than you do. If you wanna angst about anything that happened before you were 21, I suppose I'm in a pretty good position to tell you that there is absolutely no objectively good reason to do so.

Then again, I'm not going through what you are going through, and there might be new light shed on the context of those memories, so you might be thinking "Yeh right this guy's talking through his hat." That might be true. But there are things that only I can help you with; that I and only I can tell you; that just doesn't sound the same coming from anyone else. Condition: no questions. So I talk, and you listen, okay? You can't argue back. MUAHAHAHA. Gosh I love this and I should probably do this more often.

There is usually no objectively good reason for you to feel sad or to feel happy. You can identify the source of the happiness or sadness, and try to savour the goodness or solve the problem. But if you can't solve the problem, you have to live with it. You could confide in people you trust - that might help you feel better, but there's no guarantee. Yeh that's kinda shitty, I know. But even when the situation looks bleak, it would either eventually turn out for the better or you learn to look at things differently. I might not have gone through the same things as you, but I have faith that you can go through this period of sadness and emerge as a stronger person. Although this kind of stuff is usually said by other people, but I think it might also be appropriate for me to say that it's not your achievements who define who you are. You and I are defined by how we feel, what we recall and what we do when things happen to us. So even if you are in really bad shape now, I will not look down on you.

If you are depressed, you might want to go and see a doctor. Take my word for it that your 21 year old self wouldn't look down on you for it. I'll give you financial support (though that's kinda like a given).

Oh, and all these while I've been assuming that I won't do well in the future! Actually, I think the future looks pretty good! So I'm quite confident that you're actually doing quite well. If that's the case, congrats! If you want to do me a favour though, you could tell me the TOTO combi for this Sunday! Then I wouldn't have to fret over financial aid. Oh wait, you can't talk to me. Damn.

Imagine writing an SAT 1 guidebook for NSFs.

"Wah lao, that cantankerous RSM today sibeh guai lan, anyhow give extra."

"That chiobu at 3 o'clock, her pulchritude damn up sia!"

"My buddy got this vexatious habit of snoring at night, blardy annoying."

"The downpour had inundated those suai kia's half-dug fire trenches with mud, hence they had to semula."

"He chao keng so often, even his histrionics wun convince the MO to let him down pes."

"The safety vehicle parked ominously in Delta Wing line at 11pm foreshadowed a turn-out."

"Dun eat canteen already, the cookhouse satay rice today is an epicurian delight!"

Suggestions are welcomed.

SYPT is over. While I'm really happy that all four teams from RI have won the competition, reading the blog of a participant who has lost reminded me that there is always another side of things. I remember that throughout the preparation phase, whenever we hit an obstacle, we would remind ourselves: if even RI, with so much talent, school support and resources, cannot do this well, which other school can? As it turned out, we were right. All those factors greatly contributed to RI's victory. But it did make me think a little bit about how fair it all was.

Don't get me wrong. All four teams from RI deserved to win. The members were really smart, motivated and hardworking. They spent months thinking, number crunching, experimenting and rehearsing to make sure that they could put up a good fight no matter what. Which they did. It was clear that they were vastly superior to all other teams, and for some problems they even approached international standards. Yet, how are we to know that the members from other schools are not equally, if not more smart, motivated and hardworking than the RI team? By distributing resources to maximise the potential of a select group, are we burying other talents?

I understand that as a result of my interference or non-interference, there were only two possible ways things could go. Either that the RI teams maximise their potential and pwn the SYPT convincingly, while in the process improving Singapore's performance at IYPT, or that the RI teams don't become as strong, stand a good chance at winning the SYPT anyway since they are more experienced, and eventually become part of a pretty good team at IYPT. So, it seems that my interference could only have been for the better.

Still, it reminds me of the time when I gave tuition to my cousin's son. Although I was only meant to teach him N level physics chem and math, I liked to teach him extra stuff. I taught him how to make bots in Maplestory using AutoIt, and he got excited at programming. For the next week, he was bugging me to fix his code, but since I was busy then, he figured out what was wrong and managed to make a somewhat functional fishing bot for Runescape. He tried to learn Basic from online tutorials, but didn't know where to get an development kit, and had nobody to teach him. Because RI taught programming to everyone and had really good teachers and resources for it, I assumed that it would be the same for his school, and asked him to approach his school's computer studies teacher for help. It turns out that his school didn't teach that. I asked if he could approach his school's IT department personnel and just ask for help as a form of personal request, but it turns out that the IT department in his school was just an AV department and the people there didn't know programming. He struggled with learning Basic for about another week or so, but could not sustain it.

I thought that was rather wasted because I'm sure that if a Rafflesian had an interest in programming similarly sparked, he wouldn't have needed to go through so much trouble to get proper guidance. Granted, if he was sufficiently passionate about programming, he would have been able to learn it anyway, but it somehow strikes me as unfair that someone should be disadvantaged in learning stuff just because he has scored lower in PSLE four years ago. In fact, I think that because they are not as good in academics, all the more they should be allowed to explore other interests.

I know, saying that other schools get less resources is just another way of saying that RI gets more resources. There are only so many amazing teachers like Mr Mark Wee in Singapore, and it kinda makes sense that more resources are given to people who can learn better and faster. But still, the inequality in opportunities just makes me feel that it is somewhat unfair.

In the case of RGS SYPT teams not getting school support, I think that's just myopia on the school's part. It's pretty sad for the participants, really.

"Be yourself" may not be a good advice, it is nevertheless helpful to say it, but only if you really mean it.

Perhaps, people generally have a somewhat stable "self" that they revert to when they are not under stressful conditions. I know, I can hang around with a bunch of people for an afternoon, but I can't do that day after day. Perhaps, that's what is meant by "character is who you are when nobody's watching"; it is the equilibrium position, the position that requires minimal effort to sustain. And change requires a great deal of external effort, because it is very tempting to revert back to old habits.

So why do people want to change themselves if it requires so much effort to do so? Perhaps it's because they are placed in stressful situations so often that they forget who they normally are or what they would like to do. It is not too unlikely actually, since there are so many other things to think about. Another possibility, which I think sounds more plausible, is that they want to avoid being stressed by adapting to the stress. Some forms of stress are caused by a lack of ability, and these can be relieved by honing these abilities. For instance, studying is a way to relieve academic stress. And for me, honing social abilities was a way to relieve this stress.

I admit that for a large part of my life I have tried to avoid stressful situations by avoiding stressful situations, but I guess army really forced me to change because I was with people all the time and I realised how relationships are important. I went out with people more often. I initiated conversations with new people. Stuff that are slightly out of my comfort zone. But being forced into stressful situations is not enough to change. I needed to know how to change.

I started small. I remembered the awkward situation when I offered someone tissue when he was still eating. That guy said it was ok, but I still felt bad. So the next time, I remembered when to offer tissue, which logically was after one have finished his/her food, right? That didn't come naturally to me. And I did so until it became natural. This small gesture took me a bit of practice. Then, one another occasion when I was eating with someone, he kept his tissue right away after he finished his food, then he offered me his tissue, looking a little sheepish. I thanked him, but at that point I realised that during that awkward situation, that guy probably really meant it when he said "it's ok."

So perhaps people are actually quite forgiving, but sometimes I can't help but feel that someone else looks a little awkward doing something. And I would ask myself if I seemed like that. I guess there are certain body postures or gestures that convey a certain message about yourself, and some of them just leave a bad impression. And I found myself looking at glass panes more often. Self-consciousness ensues. But generally, I've found that keeping your back straight and not looking down gives a better posture. (And I gotta admit, all that military drills helped a little.) But actually, I realise that while slouching is bad posture and may not leave a good first impression, after a while when you know a person's work ethic, you don't notice the slouching any more.

Then there are little little things. My mother sometimes told me, "When someone is talking to you, look at him in the eye." I guess it made me look distracted. I practised. So now, by default, I would look at a person in the right eye whenever I talk to someone. (It's always the right eye because I practised with that and now I'm used to it.) But now you don't really know if I'm listening to what you are saying, I don't see myself becoming more attentive to what people are saying anyway, so that kinda defeats the purpose of the exercise.

I have no idea if this works, but I'm taking more notice of my own and others' body posture. Plunging myself into various awkward scenarios gave me plenty of practice. I notice how I feel, I notice what I look like, and I try to adjust to something that looks more natural. Ok, it was hard the first time, so at some other occasion I tried to notice how I feel in a natural setting, and I'd replicate that. So after a while, I kinda related my posture to my feelings, and I extrapolate it to other people. I'm not sure if it works, but I guess it gives me a kinda indication of whether someone is feeling awkward in my presence, or whether I have made a mistake or something. Generally, it seems that people don't notice my mistakes as often as I used to think they do. Maybe it's not a mistake after all.

There are other small little things like how to behave in a mall, which required some practice too, but the general thing I found out is that, people don't really notice or care about your mistakes very much, and nobody is really sure of what the right thing to do is.

I suppose most people probably went through this self-conscious phase like 7 years before I did, but I probably entered it with a somewhat different perspective. It kinda helps to have read some books, and I guess KI was a good primer to them. This journey of being self-conscious and realising that actually I need not be so worried after all is probably trivial and commonplace, but I think it has been rather significant to me. This experience has told me that being myself doesn't necessarily entail feeling awkward all the time. It has given me the reason to have faith that I'm okay.

"Be yourself." probably means "I think that you are fine the way you are". It is comforting to hear it from people who matter to you, because it is a strong expression of approval - that I have either changed enough, or that I never really needed to be so concerned after all. But say it only if you really mean it, because being yourself is not easy when the self is under so much pressure to change.

Random:

I shall try substituting choice words from the titles of the books on my book shelf with "your mom", and see how things go.

Your Mom lectures Physics

The Man who mistook His Wife for Your Mom

An Anthropologist on Your Mom

Notes from an Even Smaller Mom

Your Mom and Freedom

The Joy of Your Mom

The New Adventures of Army Moms

Freaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Your Mom

Harry Potter and the Order of Your Mom

Snow Falling on Your Mom

Brave New Mom

Money for Your Mom

On the Shoulders of Your Mom

Alice in Your Mom

The Tipping Point: How Your Mom makes a big difference